W3C and CommerceNet Joint Electronic Payment Initiative

CommerceNet and the W3
Consortium have been working for eight or nine months ending in mid-97
on a multi-industry project to develop an Internet payment negotiation
protocol. This project was about payment method (e.g. credit or debit card,
electronic check, or micropayment) selection in the Internet transaction
environment.

The web is increasingly used for electronic commerce. There are a number
of operational payment mechanisms. Now is the time to ensure interoperability
and extensibility.

The JEPI (Joint Electronic Payment Initiative) project, Phase 1, is
about an extension to HTTP (called UPP, done using PEP) allowing an automatable
selection of payment protocols (e.g. server says "I have Amex and Visa",
client says "I have Visa and MasterCard", the system can find the intersection
alone)

It is not a new payment protocol or scheme but rather a way to
negociate and select which, of the multiple available payment systems installed
on the user/server platform, should be used for a particular transaction.